Insults That Shouldn’t be Insults

Afternoon gents, it’s Max from the Young Gentleman’s Guide here! So today’s article is going to be a little different than a lot of our other articles, but I feel like it’s an important one to talk about. Throughout human history, insults have evolved practically as much as the English language have. However, in today’s society, there are a quite a few insults, especially directed towards boys and young men that really shouldn’t be seen or used as insults. So today, I’ll be going through three (3) insulting words or phrases that should not be taken too seriously.

1. Boy Scout

I’m sure at least one of you reading this has had this hurled your way. A lot of times, when people call someone a “Boy Scout”, they think that the person they’re directing it towards is a just a goody two-shoes yes man who obeys any command given to him simply because he was taught to do so. However, if someone were to look into what the Boy Scouts actually teach and advocate for, they will find a completely different narrative. Yes, they may teach things like respecting authority and generally being a good person, but they also encourage free thinking, standing up for one’s convictions and beliefs, and being on hand to help with any situation, as the Scout Motto and Scout Slogan state, “Be prepared” and “Do a good turn daily. More often than not, if someone calls someone else a Boy Scout as a means of insulting or making fun of them, that person likely doesn’t know what being a Boy Scout actually requires.

2. Virgin

You’ll see or hear this a lot when talking about a man’s masculinity. A lot of times, a man will use “virgin” to insult another man because he’s had little to no experience with women, or because he’s generally antisocial or a “prude” as a lot of people will say. However, the fact of the matter is that a man should feel no shame in being a virgin. Unless they’re what people have started to call “inels”, which I may write an entirely separate article on, a man should never feel ashamed of himself because he’s a virgin. Sure, part of the reason may be that he doesn’t have much experience talking to or interacting with women (see this article here if you want some help with that), but it could also be that he wants to stay a virgin by his own volition, which could be a variety of reasons. But in either case, there’s no shame in that. There’s no reason a man’s self-worth should be in any way tied to whether or not he’s done the deed yet.

3. Nerd/Geek

I’m sure we’ve all heard these before, whether they were directed to us or to someone else. These can also go hand-in-hand with the “virgin” insult because guys often use these insults for the same reasons. They use it to shame a guy who seems more antisocial and chooses to devote more of his time to things like movies, video games, and Dungeons & Dragons. Of course, the images that most of these other men think when thinking of the words “nerd” or “geek” is the dated 80’s stereotype of the antisocial bookworm with the big glasses who does something silly sometimes for no other reason than “he’s a geek”. Today, however, the words nerd and geek can apply to so many different things. Someone can be a movie nerd, a video game nerd, an engineering nerd, or a myriad of other things. However, I’m sure if those men hurling insults at these “nerds” actually knew who they were insulting, they would know that most of them are smart, kind, well-meaning people who just happen to be really passionate about something that most people aren’t familiar with.

So there it is! If there’s anything that should be taken away from this article, I think it’s this. Words can certainly hurt, and they can even alienate, but they only have as much power as a person chooses to give them. A lot of these words and phrases should be attributed to positivity and virtue, but it seems today that because so many people give words so much power, so many innocuous words and phrases can end up ruining someone’s life. In any case, I hope you enjoyed reading today’s article. Please be sure to share the article, follow the blog, follow The Young Gentleman’s Guide on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and support us on Patreon. And on that note, this is Max from The Young Gentleman’s Guide, and I’ll see you next time!